How often do sex and romance come up in your games?

[Lwaxy]

I don't mean any explicit stuff, I'm guessing most groups won't have that.

In my campaigns, romances and marriages tend to happen, either between PCs or PCs and regular NPCs. In one campaign, the PCs all started as children and are now, 7 or 8 years later, going through puberty so it comes up often, including some of the (well played) drama. We have prostitutes as PCs every now and then, PCs we need to drag out of brothels - including a female PC - and religious orders focused on the "art of love." We had rulers being so obsessed with chasing skirts (or pants) they forgot how to rule, leaving their realm open for a lot of mishap. There was an NPC stalking the group leader a while back. Etc.

We don't allow for anything explicit, so while "romancing the barmaid" is fine and happens, no one wants to know what happens when they get somewhere secluded, unless, of course, they get attacked by monsters. Which of course happens, too

I'm curious because of another thread where it was implied that most groups don't have romance or sex in their games, which i find hard to believe because unless playing with kids I can't remember any group where it didn't come up.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sex? Often, especially after ale...

Romance- much rarer. I have a pair of MY PCs that are wedded, and once ran an alien gladiatrix who had feelings for the human team leader in a supers game, but that's about it for me.

 

[delericho]

Almost never.

 

[Minigiant]

Often it is nothing more than taking the barmaid, chieftain's children, innkeeper's child, and raving fans "upstairs, into your tent, or out to the woods."

But usually any NPC hit on more than twice gets kidnapped as a plot hook. Multpile DMs including myself do that one.

Oh and there was the time my halfling (paladin of freedom of the Church of Wild Parties, Wild animals, and Wild Hair) accidentally tested the Law of Inverse Fertility with a recurring villain and and it became a Batman/Catwoman thing.

Most of the romance issues and complications were for NPCs and villains though.

 

[Leviatham]

It really depends. Certainly relationships happen often. Sex sometimes, though it is not explained unless it is necessary.

Examples: My friend was running a dwarf paladin of Moradin and he decided to fall in love with a priestess. The GM though it'd make for good metaplot and we roleplayed it for months. Eventually my friend decided he wanted to have a child. He did, but we didn't have to go through the details of conception or birth. We did go though the process of pregnancy, though, and how difficult it was for my character to be away from home when his wife was pregnant.

On another occasion, one of my friend's character was kidnapped by a succubus. The GM went into some length to describe the sort of sexual tortures he'd been subjected to because he wanted us to understand how dangerous that creature actually is.

In my Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu games, relationships, gender and sex do take a slightly more relevant role, if anything because historically that was affecting society to a greater extent, and there was more underground discovery and exploration of sex, as well as a liberalization of the female society.

 

[Yora]

Never. Not on principle, but it hasn't yet.

 

[Li Shenron]

In principle all those things you mentioned (and more) are allowed in our games, both those related to romance and those related to sex, except rape. I've only played with adults so we never had problem with such topics being included in a campaign, but at the same time we would have never went into describing morbid details...

However it practically never happened that someone wanted to roleplay their PC's romance in detail, I think the reason being a combination of shyness, lack of interest, and difficulty.

 

[Gilladian]

I think a few times a character has taken a barmaid upstairs, or similar. But not terribly often. If it is happening, they assume it occurs "offscreen" while they're partying between adventures.

As far as romance, I think they assume it would get their characters into too much trouble to be romatically interested in someone. They're far more likely to take on an orphan or a flock of servants/hirelings.

Once, we had a PC whose girlfriend was missing and he was hunting for her, but the campaign died before he ever got close to tracking her down. Interestingly, this player was gay, and I offered to have the girlfriend be a boyfriend, but the player said no, he wanted a straight romance.

Another time we had an NPC henchman who was married and his wife was a total nag, such that he took up adventuring just to get away from her. But there was no romance there; just comic relief.

My players (I've been gaming with a core pair for almost 20 years, now) don't seem interested in playing out anything remotely romantic or intimate at the game table.

 

[Dozen]

Almost nonexistent. Ol' BoEF just sits on my shelf

 

[JamesonCourage]

Every single campaign, with about half of the characters involved at some point.

Right now, every PC is involved in some sort of romantic relationship (two are married with kids, too). It's part of life, and it tends to develop naturally enough. Like you, nothing explicit happens, and we will skip over stuff as we feel is natural (though I, as GM, tend to make it clear what's going on, in case anybody is hazy or wants to take precautions).